Mild signs of a potential willingness to modernise have been observed in some of central London’s establishment clubs in recent weeks, led by the announcement that, after 166 years, women will be allowed to become members of Pratt’s.
The decision has been met mostly with resigned acceptance by the club’s membership, which includes at least a dozen MPs, and has triggered renewed discussion of possible reform at the hardcore handful of gentlemen’s clubs that refuse to admit women.
Members of the Beefsteak, another men-only dining club populated with MPs, actors and judges, believe it is likely it will be obliged to change its rules. A renewed drive by female campaigners was launched this month to persuade members of the Garrick, including Michael Gove and the actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Hugh Bonneville, to allow women to join.
Meanwhile, at the Athenaeum (which has allowed women as members since 2002) a movement by about 70 members to block further modernising changes was rejected at its annual general meeting, with an intervention from the former prime minister Theresa May, who shut down discussion of motions aimed at preserving the club’s “traditional ethos”.
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